Yesterday, my wife was a bit tardy in disarming the GC2 alarm, at about 4:15PM. This resulted in what she described as one initial loud chirp from the control panel before she got the disarm code entered. On the rare occasions we have failed to disarm the panel, and it goes into audible alarm, we wait and anticipate we will soon be engaged in two way conversation with SuretyDIY, providing our name and code. The two way is VERY LOUD and can not be missed! Hearing nothing, we dismissed it as all being caught in time, no harm, no foul. That was fine until the police show up at our door asking about intrusion, which we discussed and he went on his way.
In full disclosure we did each get a phone call from Ogden, but neither of us happen to have our phones at the time. Is the use of two way voice no longer in the procedure?
Records show operators attempted contact using a Two way voice signal which came in 5/21 but did not hear a response.
I recall one or two cases in the past with what appears to be a connection failure by the panel in the rare case when a local disarm occurs after the alarm but likely before the full two-way signal transmission. If you disarmed the system almost simultaneously with the expiration of entry delay, this may be possible.
To ensure there are no general issues which are preventing two way from connecting at all on your panel, it would be good to test. You can contact Central Station operators and request your account be placed in Two Way Voice test mode. This will let you generate local alarms which will result in attempted two way contact, but not dispatch.
When tested, does Two way voice come through on the panel?
I need to validate the proper operation of two way voice mode. This has always worked well in the past, however on 5/21 at about 4:15PM I accidentally let the entry delay expire. I never got a two way voice notification. Need to confirm proper operation.
You can view standard operating procedure for CS operators here. 2-Way is optional on Gold Interactive accounts and functions as the first contact method. If the location would not otherwise be contacted, 2-Way wouldn’t be used. (For example, 2-way activates for silent panics, but only allows listening for activity during a silent panic)
From the above response, according to your account history an alarm signal and two way call came in on 5/21, and operators attempted to connect and contact through 2-Way, but they noted on the event that there was no response through 2-Way. They subsequently attempted contact via the contact phone list.
The 2GIG panel 2-Way voice is indeed extremely loud and hard to miss. If nothing was heard on the panel, this indicates one of a couple things:
The panel speaker failed. Hardware failure is unlikely in this case and would persist for other sounds.
The 2-Way call connection failed. From above, we have seen a previous case in which a 2GIG panel was disarmed almost simultaneously with the entry delay expiration, which appeared to cause the 2-Way connection to fail. If this is what occurred here (seems to be based on the original description) this is the likely culprit.
In any case, the 2-Way connection for this event failed and to ensure that it is not a general panel issue it is recommended to perform a 2-Way test per the instruction in the above post.
Thank you Warren and Jason.
I have now tested the two way in a test mode, and all is fine. Cellular is about 22/31 at last check, so I do not think there is a signal level issue. I would detect any internal audio failure as it gives voice audibles when armed/disarmed. I know we were present at the time of disarming and waiting for the two way voice. You have validated that the two way voice was initiated so I can only concur that we caught it in some temporal never-never land, and we failed on answering the Ogden call.
For future, I was not sure how to set up test, and attempted via Alarm.Com ticket/issue 1604761. The response to that was “no record found”, ticket/issue closed. This AM I used the 877 number. What is proper?
For future, I was not sure how to set up test, and attempted via Alarm.Com ticket/issue 1604761. The response to that was “no record found”, ticket/issue closed. This AM I used the 877 number. What is proper?
Ah, happy to help! You can contact the Central Station directly 24/7 to perform testing at your convenience. Contact the central station at 855-348-0367. Have your account passcode ready and you can request to place your account on Two Way Test mode for a chosen period of time.
Be sure to specify Two way test mode, as normal test mode will not result in two way response when an alarm signal is tested.